Klabautermann

Germany
German coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic: Pomerania and Rügen (Temme, 1840), Schleswig-Holstein (Müllenhoff, 1845)

Klabautermann — the invisible ship’s spirit of the German coasts, who hammers on the planking at night to warn the carpenter and abandons the vessel that is doomed.

Variants and names

Klabautermann, Klabotermann (Heine, 1826), Klabatermann (Temme, 1840), Kalfater, Klabautermännchen

What is told

The ship’s spirit, invisible, who lives in the hold and makes himself heard hammering on the planking at night. The first to write of him is Heinrich Heine, in the third part of the Nordsee (1826), reporting what the sailors told him: «the good, invisible patron saint of ships, who sees to it that no misfortune befalls faithful and orderly seamen» — and «often the Klabotermann also hammers on the outside of the ship, and that is meant for the carpenter». In the collections from Pomerania and Rügen (Temme, 1840) he is born from the soul of an unbaptised child buried under a tree whose wood went into the hull, and he abandons the ship that is about to be lost; hence the belief, alive throughout the nineteenth century, that seeing him is a bad sign.

What it was forthe author’s reading

The household sprite transferred to a house that floats: he protects those who work well and knocks where the timber gives, that is, he does, in the form of a spirit, the caulker’s trade. His figure swings between two poles that the sources hold together without contradiction: protector as long as the ship is sound, omen when he leaves it. He is the only creature of German folklore that was born in print in the Romantic period and then re-entered the oral tradition of the ports.

Where it is attested

Heinrich Heine, Reisebilder II, Die Nordsee, third part, 1826. J. D. H. Temme, Die Volkssagen von Pommern und Rügen, Berlin, 1840, no. 253 «Der Kalfater oder Klabatermann», p. 300. Karl Müllenhoff, Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg, Kiel, 1845, no. 500 «Das Klabautermännchen». E. F. Ellett, «Traditions and Superstitions», American Whig Review, III, January 1846, p. 108. Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. V (1866), cols. 887-888, s.v. klabastern. Reinhard J. Buss, The Klabautermann of the Northern Seas, University of California Press, Folklore Studies 25, 1973. Etymology: Pfeifer, DWDS («Klabotermann 1826, Klabautermann 1828»).

Caution

There is nothing in print before 1826: the thesis that the belief is attested «since the 1770s» is an inference from the sailors’ tales in Heine, not a document. Heine’s passage is often placed in the Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski (1834), which deal with the Flying Dutchman: the Klabotermann is instead in the Nordsee. The etymology is open: from the verb klabastern, to make a racket (Grimm), or from the Kalfater, the caulker (Kluge; preferred by Pfeifer); the reference to Dutch kabouter is attributed to Grimm without confirmation. Buss’s conclusions are cited here from reviews and not from the book. The Klabautermann of Andersen, of comic-book pirates and of Käpt’n Blaubär has not been verified; what is found is the pen name of the poet Klabund, declared to be composed of Klabautermann and Vagabund.

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